Comus

Just as Comus has revealed his nature and purpose, the Lady now reveals her own character and orientation in life. These are directly opposed to those of Comus, as the verse form she uses immediately establishes. Like the Attendant Spirit, she speaks in unrhymed iambic pentameters that contrast with Comus’s shorter, rhyming lines. The Lady has heard the commotion made by Comus and his crew, and she thinks it comes just from a group of farm assistants (“unlettered hinds” [Line 174]) as they dance in praise of the god Pan. Both the allusion to Pan, a satyr-god associated with revelry and fertility, and the emphasis on the “workers’” lack of education underscore Comus’s consistent alignment of evil with disorder, sensuality, and irrationality. By contrast, the Lady instinctively wants to avoid the revelers’ “riot and ill-managed merriment” (Line 172), establishing her preference for order and sobriety. 

Meanwhile, her description of how she got left on her own—her brothers went to get some berries or fruit to refresh her but did not return—invokes the overarching imagery of light and darkness. She thinks that her brothers must have gone too far and got lost in the “envious darkness” (Line 194), personifying the night in a way that suggests its villainy and also associates it with her own plight. In her apostrophe (direct address) to Night, and then to Faith, Hope, and Chastity, she continues to use contrasting imagery of darkness and light. Faith and hope combined are “a hovering angel girt with golden wings” (Line 214). In this passage, she offers a variation on the holy virtues described in the Bible by St. Paul in 1 Corinthians, Chapter 13, which praises “faith, hope, charity,” with charity as the greatest of the three. She also mentions God as the “Supreme Good” (Line 217) and the result is that a glimmer of light penetrates the darkness of the wood. This encapsulates the theme of Ever-Present Divine Grace, as the Lady has only to ask for guidance to receive it.

The Lady’s response—a song—further illustrates her goodness by associating her with the music of heaven. Hoping to find her brothers, she sings for help to the nymph Echo, saying that her brothers resemble Narcissus, with whom, in Greek mythology, Echo fell in love. Echo seems not to respond, offering no information about the location of the brothers. However, although the Lady’s voice fails to echo in the way that she wished, it does find a listener—Comus. It is as if, “Supreme Good” (Line 217) or not, Comus and the Lady are preordained to meet—so that chastity, reason, and virtue can demonstrate their power. Indeed, Comus is quite taken by the voice he hears and praises it in extravagant terms. It reminds him of when his mother and the three Sirens would sing together and charm the imprisoned souls. (The Sirens’ singing puts a spell on sailors, including Odysseus and his men in the Odyssey.) However, Comus has never heard the equal of the Lady’s song: “[S]uch a sacred and home-felt delight, / Such sober certainty of waking bliss” (Lines 262-63). His words suggest a reversal in the text’s basic dynamic, hinting that the Lady might “tempt” Comus to abandon his life of sensual indulgence in favor of the clear-headed happiness that, according to Christianity, God alone provides.

When Comus speaks to her, they engage for 15 lines in dialogue of a single line each, following what is known as stichomythia in ancient Greek drama. The Lady tells of her loss of her brothers, and Comus says that earlier he saw them picking “ripe clusters” (Line 296) from a vine that is “along the side of yon small hill” (Line 295). Comus may be lying, which aligns him with another tempter, Satan, whom Milton presented in his epic poem, Paradise Lost. In Christian thought, Satan is above all a deceiver, and Comus, too, is willing to mislead to accomplish his desires. He is also a very convincing liar, and the Lady is quite taken in by his offer to guide her to her brothers. However, Milton suggests that Comus has also been taken in, though not intentionally; he has no idea of who he is dealing with since the realm of goodness and light to which the Lady devotes herself is beyond his comprehension. Their mutual misapprehension of one another lays the groundwork for the text’s escalating conflict.